


Ethical Butchery: the boneless artisan

by Euny_Sloane



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Because apparently that's the only kind of smut I know how to write, Both meat as in meat-for-food and meat as in Gabriel's meat, But minimal really minimal blood nobody is injured, Butchery references, Class Differences, Drunk Sex, Even if requiring that level of consent isn't explicitly negotiated, Explicit Consent, I'm sorry did you expect these tags to be serious?, Ineffable Bureaucracy, Just literal pork, Light Dom/sub, Nonbinary Beelzebub (Good Omens), Nonbinary Character, Other, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, The fic isn't really funny it's just the tags, They/Them Pronouns for Beelzebub (Good Omens), VERY Explicit Consent, blood mention, insulting stupid customers is a form of affection, meat references, pork, that is definitely a kink even if it isn't a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:21:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24151987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euny_Sloane/pseuds/Euny_Sloane
Summary: SummaryBeelzebub takes apart whole carcasses for a living. Gabriel knows the first time he sees Beelzebub with a knife in their hand how much he wants those hands on him.Excerpt“That knife was bigger than your whole hand, and still you took that joint apart like it was made for you to cut it to pieces.” His fingers grazed across their knuckles before rolling under their palm and pulling, drawing Beez to stand before him. Their thigh brushed up against the inside of his knee.Beelzebub’s breath hitched. They’d resent it, if they weren’t drunk. On the wine, and the nearness of him. On the tipping point of their own need.“I wonder...” He cleared his throat. “I wondered what else you could take apart?”
Relationships: Beelzebub/Gabriel (Good Omens)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 86





	Ethical Butchery: the boneless artisan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [summerofspock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerofspock/gifts).



> Many thanks to [@Melibe ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melibe/pseuds/Melibe)for skillful and friendly beta-ing. 
> 
> Gifted in gratitude to [@summerofspock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerofspock/pseuds/summerofspock), a lovely beta, author, purveyor of smut, and human being. 
> 
> Thanks as well to [@Zingiber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zingiber/pseuds/Zingiber), who named Beez' shop.

They had known, from the first time they saw him, that he was attractive. Like he’d fallen into three dimensions from a GQ magazine. Not Beez’ type. So they would never admit how they could hardly look him in the eye when he’d first stepped inside their shop, the tinkling bell over the door incongruous alongside the wet thunk of their cleaver. Beez had finished breaking down the joint with a few assertive movements, then glanced up from their worktop. And looked up higher still. 

He’d known just what he wanted: enough tri-tip steak for a dinner party for four. He had loudly praised their neat efficiency with a knife, had openly derided a customer who complained about the price of a rack of lamb. Had returned the next week. And the next. And then made purchases three days in succession before sliding a business card across the counter in exchange for the receipt. He’d smiled, and something in Beez’ stomach had pulled at the sight. He’d gestured to the card, Beez had shrugged, and he’d left, confident gait carrying his oxfords out the door in three long strides. 

Beez had grabbed the card as soon as he’d disappeared from view, had passed by the outline of their shop sign on the window: _The Rib of Adam_. 

The card belonged to Dr. Gabriel Winger, Associate Professor of Ethics and Philosophy at the ivy league college in the next town over. There had been a neatly penned note on the back, above a phone number that did not match the office line on the front:

_I know it’s gauche to ask service workers out. Text me or don’t. I won’t mention this again._

Galled at being labeled a “service worker” when they were a damned business owner, Beelzebub had looked up “gauche,” convinced he’d spelled it wrong. He hadn’t. 

They called him, instead of texting. People spent too much fucking time texting and they didn’t have time for the games people played that way; too much room for bullshit. Gabriel sounded pleasantly surprised to hear from them, coolly invited them out for drinks. Seemingly unbothered by the challenge of working around Beez’ long shop hours and delivery schedule, he suggested a nearby bar that actually served some of Beelzebub's charcuterie. But he hadn’t mentioned that fact, leaving Beez wondering if he was really so thorough, if he could possibly be so careful. 

He leaned up against the bar, they sat on a barstool. They fell into companionable bickering about the relationship between the cost and quality of liquor; Beelzebub only barely refrained from direct comparison of too many of the options the bar had at its disposal. They complained, loudly, that the range of quality wasn’t really enough for a fair test anyway, and Gabriel laughed, whether at Beelzebub’s critique or the evident discomfort of the bartender, Beez couldn’t tell. Maybe both. They wanted it to be both. 

And when he walked them back to their shop, and they thought of the barren flat above it, considered making good on their invitation for a glass of wine sometime into a glass of wine now, they looked up at his eyes. Beez discovered that the problem of finding his face unbearable to look at was neatly solved by closing the distance to kiss him. They couldn’t see anything if their own eyes had fallen closed at the brush of his lips against theirs. 

Although that created other problems in the form of his glasses, which poked Beez in the eye, and then he apologized, his voice already gone rough around the edges. The sound of his voice, _apologizing?_ If Beelzebub hadn’t already felt him hard against their hip, sending a clear message about his interest, that apology would have been a damn problem, because they weren’t about to explain the sudden onset of an apology kink.

Dr. Sculpted Ass, apologizing to Beez, who'd spent their afternoon stuffing pig guts full of blood-soaked oats and boiling them. Who had hastily scrubbed a cloth across their face in their rush to clean up for this date with Gabriel. Whose departure from college so they could apprentice to an artisan butcher had led to a screaming match with their mother and left years of silence in its wake. Whose customers only asked why everything was so expensive, complaining loudly that the supermarkets had everything precut, prepackaged, in two layers of plastic. In value packs. 

Nobody apologized to Beelzebub, which was _fine_ , of course, because they wouldn’t apologize to anyone else either. And here this stupidly tall man--with his vile cheekbones and the shadow of his barely-felt stubble, scraping against their lips as they kissed over the thrum of his blood in his neck--here he was telling them sorry, for not even a scratch. Not even the nick of a knife that Bee would take as a matter of course in their day's work. 

Their own hiss of surprise when his glasses frames poked them in the eye was nothing to the sound Beelzebub wrung out of him when they bit his lip after, just shy of hard enough to draw blood. Beez hadn’t apologized. He didn’t seem to mind. And then, panting openly against them, he suggested they have that glass of wine Beez had mentioned, with an edge to the question that made the curling heat in their guts climb up their vertebrae. 

They would never have asked to stop and catch their breath, to sit across from him in their half-empty apartment, on kitchen chairs in lieu of an absent couch, with knees almost touching, and talk about their day. To see him lean in as he listened, to hear his laugh eviscerate their idiotic customers one by one. To sink into conversation with him, to relish the way he stared at their lips as they licked off the sheen of red wine. To stare back at his: bitten-red, wine-red, blood-red, while the silence bloomed between them, like a stain. To hear him slice the silence open with an unexpected question.

“Do you know what I keep thinking about?” His voice had cracked into something husky, need breaking through his carefully cultivated tones. 

They pulled their tongue from the roof of their mouth, sticky with wine and exhaustion and desire, peeled the words out of them. Beelzebub would have done more to be able to ask, would live gladly with the shame of their breathy “No,” and the keen awareness of how they sounded when they asked him, “Tell me?”

“That first day, before you looked up from your work.”

“Yes?”

“I recall that knife. In your hands.” He reached one of his own hands out, plucked the wineglass from them, set it aside on the table. 

Eyes locked on Gabriel as Beelzebub felt the glass lift away, Beez had an implausible sense that the glass could have floated away on its own. 

“That knife was bigger than your whole hand, and still you took that joint apart like it was made for you to cut it to pieces.” His fingers grazed across their knuckles before rolling under their palm and pulling, drawing Beez to stand before him. Their thigh brushed up against the inside of his knee. 

Beelzebub’s breath hitched. They’d resent it, if they weren’t drunk. On the wine, and the nearness of him. On the tipping point of their own need. 

“I wonder...” He cleared his throat. “I wondered what else you could take apart?”

Beelzebub felt the question _You?_ stick in their throat, lodged like a stray fishbone. But they held their ground, more aware of their shorter stature when they stood nearly eye to eye like this, with him still settled in the chair. They drifted a little closer, to stand with his knees jutting out to either side of them, bracketing them. Beez cleared their throat to speak, but Gabriel cocked his head to the side, an interrupting gesture. 

He licked two of his fingers, inciting hysterical thoughts in Beelzebub, before he reached out to swipe it under their chin, pulling back fingers stained brown. Beelzebub drew breath to explain. 

Gabriel asked, “What’s this?” Before Beelzebub could respond, he’d touched the tip of the finger to his tongue. 

Beelzebub’s insides turned over, thinking of the tang of iron on his lips, of the matching stains on their apron, crumpled in the laundry bag downstairs, of how their fingers still smelled of casing and spices, of... 

“Blood?”

“I was--” Beelzebub began. 

Gabriel interrupted, nonplussed, “You were making blood sausage today.” 

Beelzebub nodded, tried to ready an apology. Tried to remember they didn’t apologize to anyone for who they were, for what they did. Kicked themself for missing that spot of blood, for rushing, for…

Gabriel made a sound low in his throat, slid one hand around Beelzebub’s waist, their spine bending gently against it for a moment as he pulled them forward. His knuckles grazed along their chin, still faintly damp where he’d rubbed the stain away. They felt his smooth nails slide against their neck, his hand unfurling, the blunt tips of his fingernails scraping across their pulse, his fingers slipping in between their hair. A sharp sigh cut out of Beelzebub. He pulled their face close to his. He rested his cheek against theirs a moment, scratching softly against Beelzebub’s face, and breathed against their ear, “You could take _me_ apart, you know.”

Beelzebub broke through the buzzing of their thoughts to ask, gracelessly, “Huh?”

“Just tell me what you want.”

Gabriel stayed right there, cheek against theirs, his words tickling their earlobe, his fingers curling and uncurling, stroking the hair at the nape of Beelzebub’s neck. 

Beez asked, “What?” They felt lightheaded, as if they could float away just as they’d imagined the wineglass could when he lifted it from their hands. 

“To take me apart. Just tell me what you want.” He shifted, sliding rough cheek against smooth, and drew them into another kiss, Beelzebub’s gasps making space for the press of his tongue. Beez realized that they had fisted one hand in his sweater, buttery soft under their fingers. It felt expensive and here they were, wrecking it, pulling it out of shape. They clutched tighter, dug their nails in. 

He pulled back, sighed into their mouth, “Beez, tell me.”

Their thoughts skittered to a stop. 

“Beez,” Gabriel said, firmer. And, soft again, a half-question, “please.” 

“Kiss me again?” they asked. 

He did, grinning, and the heat within Beelzebub opened, deepened, ached. They didn’t usually do this. Not on a first date, not with someone like him. Not, if they were honest, for a very long time at all. Not since they had opened The Rib of Adam all alone. It had been over two years of expending every spare hour dismantling carcasses and arguing with vendors and smiling (ok, smirking) at customers who asked for frozen chicken tenders, oven ready. Two years of falling into bed so wrung out that even a glance at their vibrator made them feel unbearably heavy. 

Gabriel’s hands were on their waist, holding them up, warm and broad and soft--goddamn, they had known his hands had to be soft--hands that typed and dialed and gestured in front of lecture halls, not hands that sharpened and sliced and cut, built calluses as the wood handles grew polished with sweat and blood and fat and effort. 

Beez pictured him with his delicious lips pressed up against their cunt, those sure, unmarred hands pulling them up against his face. They thought of his tongue waking nerve endings as his fingers...Beez knew what they wanted, they knew, and he’d said he wanted to know. Right?

Beez pulled back, roughly, surprising Gabriel into wrinkling his eyes, opening his mouth to object or ask what was wrong, and Beelzebub’s voice cracked on the one word they could manage. “Bed?”

Gabriel’s face broke into a smile and he scooted the chair back. Beelzebub felt momentarily bereft. He gestured with his head behind him to the hallway. “Is it back there?”

“Yeah.”

“Lead the way?”

Beelzebub was surprised to find their legs had gone a bit loose, knees uncertain of their role in the universe of their body, but Beez avoided stumbling, avoided making a fool of themself as they walked down the short hall, the sense of Gabriel a burning brand at their back - glowing, vivid, unmistakably present. 

Their bedroom was as functional as the rest of the apartment. The bedspread, black faded to an indeterminate grey, carelessly thrown over pilling flannel sheets. A dresser. A closet door left half ajar. No bedside table, just a stool with a small, battered lamp. 

Beelzebub had meant to do something about it, had meant to make it something more than just a place to sleep. They lingered inside the doorway, their cheeks heating to think of the mismatched pillowcase under that blanket, as Gabriel slid in past them. He was somehow graceful, almost non-intrusive here, despite his stature, despite the obvious chip on his shoulder in the outside world. They wondered, for a moment, how this Gabriel could be the same one who had told off some customer in their shop, the very first time he’d set foot in the door. 

Gabriel strode forward, unhesitating, sat on the bed, settled with his thighs nearly together. He looked Beez right in the eye and held his arms out, the sly affection in his gesture stirring something in Beelzebub. “Join me?” 

_It was their bed, their own,_ but Beelzebub moved forward without conscious volition, driven by want and by instinct. They felt their heart rattle around in their chest, could feel their breaths coming deep, uneven. Could feel their desire growing in them, unwieldy and unfamiliar. An edge of anxiety bloomed in them and they reached for Gabriel, who took their hand, took in their face at a glance, and pulled them, his careful hands under their thighs, up on to his lap, so they kneeled across it. They could feel him hard, up against their cunt. He moaned a little, and his hips twitched, as his hands stroked up along their back, their spine, the curve of their shoulder blades. With his hands there, persuasive and gentle, Beelzebub felt almost as if they could sprout wings, and not sad, flightless ones like those on the chickens they spatchcocked for cooks too timid to do it themselves. 

Beelzebub shifted against him, his heat meeting theirs, and grabbed the hem of their shirt to lift it off. Gabriel brought one hand around to still theirs. 

“Wait.” 

Beelzebub’s eyes narrowed, a chill worry creeping in, asked tonelessly, “What the fuck?”

Gabriel produced a particularly insufferable smile, gripped their ass and pulled them in, rocking his hips just slightly, so the line of his cock, hard in his trousers, ground against them. Beelzebub bit their lip, sucked back the urge to whimper. Barely. 

Breathlessly, Gabriel asked, “Tell me what you want.” He rocked his hips again. “Tell me all of it.” 

They tried to think through the humming need that had climbed up their spine, steadily filling their thoughts from the first brush of Gabriel’s hand on theirs at the bar, passing them their drink. 

Beelzebub said, “What do you me--ah!” as he rocked against them again. They shifted back, a couple inches, half-surprised that Gabriel let them, and glared. “Do you want me to tell you,” they gasped out, “or not?”

Gabriel laughed, a low, throaty chuckle, and Beelzebub felt it vibrate right through them. He shifted his hands, held them more lightly, palms just grazing their hips. “Oh I do. I _do_.” 

Beelzebub immediately regretted their insistence that he cease his efforts. Missed the friction, missed even more the excuse for the hitch in their breath as they retorted, “What I _want_ is for you to fuck me.” 

“Mmm,” Gabriel mused, lifted one hand to stroke along Beelzebub’s jaw, then slowly down their neck, pausing on the vein where their blood pulsed madly underneath his cool fingers as his smile grew. 

A moment of nausea arrived with the clarity that if they had thought they could hide anything they were feeling, it was there, thrumming under his fingertips, as mad and erratic as their thoughts. And then his fingers moved on, tracing an ethereal path down their sternum, coming to rest on Beelzebub’s frantic heart. 

He leaned forward and whispered into their ear, which Beez thought entirely unfair, “Let’s get more specific, hm? _Where_ do you want me to touch you?” He sucked in a breath, the movement of air cool against Beelzebub’s burning ear. “What parts of me do you want me to fuck you _with?_ ” 

That was too much. Beelzebub whimpered, thinly assembled control shearing away. 

“Oh, that’s _nice_ ,” Gabriel purred. “Didn’t that feel nice,” he asked, “to let go a little? Mm?”

And it didn’t matter if it felt nice to let go or not, because the sound was coming out of Beez again, longer this time, not sure how they’d become tucked up against his cock again, how his hands had come up under their shirt, fingers tracing their back just under their waistband softly, as their stomach danced and their cunt clenched, as if to point out how empty it was. 

“Just think how nice it will be,” he hissed, hips momentarily stilled, “to tell me just what you want me to do to you, and then give over to making those sounds, mm?” And this time, his thumbs were tracing a light path back and forth on their belly, just under their clothes, on either side of their belly button. Back and forth, slow, in time with his teasing words. 

“Gabriel,” Beez moaned.

“Mmm?” He continued his ministrations, unhurried. “Did you want something?”

Beelzebub loosed their hands from where they’d been gripping their own thighs, moved to unbutton their trousers, but one of his hands came to cover both of theirs, to still them. A sob wracked out of them. “ _Fucking get on with it.”_

“Get on with _what_ , mm? What is it you want? What is it you need?"

"Your mouth _, please. Please._ " Beelzebub never begged, not in bed or out of it, not for anything, certainly not for some mannequin to do what he obviously wanted to do anyway. But the friction, their angle against his cock, his lingering touch, the feel of his fingers inches from where they wanted him to slip into, left them delirious with need, and unexpectedly, hearing that word drawn from them made them feel even more wild, the sharp ache in them keener. 

Gabriel asked, with affectionate calm, hands still moving over them, under their shirt, tracing light and imperative lines into their skin. "Can’t you be more specific?"

Beelzebub burned with it all: the sound of their own begging, the friction against their cunt, their emptiness. They choked out, "No, no, I can't…" 

Gabriel immediately slowed, stopped, rested his hands soft and easy on Beelzebub’s back. 

Beez sobbed. They actually fucking sobbed and hated themself for the open need they heard as they said, “Don't stop.” 

Beelzebub could feel the smile in his voice. “Shhh, shhh. You said you couldn't. Just take a breath. I'm not going to do anything you don't want me to, or can't do. That’s what we’re doing here. Just waiting for you to tell me what you want.” 

A loose, hiccuping breath escaped Beez. They felt his voice, the air warm from his lungs, on their ear again. 

“My fingers? My cock? Do you need those too?”

Voice desperate, high, sounding entirely unlike them, Beez’ words crowded out. “Yes, yes, both, both.” 

“In your cunt? In your mouth? Somewhere else? _”_

And through their haze, Beez hoped this wouldn't just be a one night stand because they wanted all of those, but right now, all they wanted was, "My cunt, goddammit, please, yes. My cun--ah!" He’d rocked against them, just for a moment, cutting them off. Beez didn’t give a fuck.

A raw sound punched out of Gabriel and he groaned “ _Fuck,_ yes.” He pulled Beez against him one more, and then he was sliding buttons open, and zippers, and hissing to them to let go of his sweater for just a minute, just a minute. Just to slip his shirt off, and their shirt off, and Beez’ undershirt, while they panted, begged, barely coherent, and he paused after each piece of clothing to kiss them.

Beez had to rise off his lap to discard their denims, their underwear, kicked them off onto the floor, turning back to find him shirtless, trouserless, but still clad in undershirt and briefs. They realized, absently, that they’d left their socks on, hoped with some faraway part of themself that they weren’t the ratty ones, weren’t silly. As if they had any other kind of socks. 

He held out his arms to them, but Beelzebub was already clambering back onto his lap, could feel him clearly through the thin fabric of his underwear, hotter and more apparent than before, could see his chest rising in ragged gasps. Beez ground against him, felt his hips stutter a little, heard his bitten-off moan. Their head cleared for a moment, hearing him coming undone, coming apart, and they rocked their own hips against him, loosing a primitive sound from him, before he grasped them in strong arms, rolled them both over, nudged Beez to scoot up towards the pillows, crouched between their knees, ran his hands over their sides, their belly, their hips. 

Gabriel’s hands came to rest under their thighs, his fingers curling up around the side of their legs. He placed his lips reverently on one of their knees, dropped kisses on a path along the inside of their thigh. As his lips neared their cunt, Beez felt the throb of their heart beating there. But he changed direction, brushed his lips along the crease of their hip, and Beez’ heart sank, their determination to be done with begging crumbled. 

“Your mouth,” they complained, “you _said.”_

Gabriel made a satisfied sort of growl, shifted his hands under their hips to raise them a little, and nestled his face in the thatch between Beez’ thighs, nuzzled in between their lips, and murmured “Fuck, you smell so good.”

Beez had been craving the feel of his tongue, his fingers, anything, to slide directly across their clit, over their folds, into the wet heat of them, felt wild with the ache for it, and as his tongue glided across them, an unhinged cry fell from their lips. And another, as Gabriel’s answering sound vibrated into them, so that Beelzebub hardly noticed one of his hands slipping out from under their thigh, to slide effortlessly into their cunt. 

Beelzebub let go of Gabriel’s shoulder, which they hadn’t realized they were gripping, to clap their hand over their mouth just before they cried out into it. Beelzebub heard their name from Gabriel’s lips, a distant sound, a desperate one. Their hand fell from their mouth to grip the bedspread and they wailed in release. 

Gabriel said, “Holy fuck, yes. That’s it. Fuck.” He sounded nearly as done in as they did. 

Coming down a little, Beez realized he was pulling his fingers out already. Beez breathed, "Wait, what…"

And he stopped, fingers paused halfway inside their cunt. "Too much?”

Too much? _Like hell it was too much._ "No. Not..." their hips shuddered again, pushed back involuntarily against his hand. "Not too much, ah!" 

Gabriel looked puzzled, then inordinately pleased. "Not enough, then?"

 _Fuck you,_ Bee tried to say, but it came out as a whine. They whined, fucking _whined_ , just the thought of his cock inside them already breaking their resolve to pull it together. 

Gabriel drew his hand out of Beez’s cunt the rest of the way and rose from the bed to rummage in his trousers nearby. He produced a condom, which he tossed on the bed. Beez, impatient and nowhere near sated, leaned up on one palm. They stared at the long line of Gabriel’s body as he pulled his shirt off to reveal the planes of his chest dusted with soft, curling hairs, and the curving angle of his hip jutting out of his boxers. They pictured his hip extending past his waistband, down to the creases where hip met thigh, indicating the joint beneath. 

Gabriel glanced around for somewhere to discard his shirt and briefly met Beez’ eyes. His expression held something raw, torn open, revealing an interior that Beelzebub didn’t think he’d show on purpose: tender-soft and rich with unexpected hues. Beez recalled him saying they could take him apart; he seemed half-disassembled already, and they wondered which subtle divots they could press for leverage--where they could grip him with their small, sure hands to take him apart completely. 

He looked away and, bending to strip off his boxers, displayed a somewhat larger cock than Beez had expected, or was entirely at ease with. But it had been a long damn time, and there were worse things than the next day soreness of a good fuck. 

Gabriel turned to them and smiled, climbed back onto the bed. With one hand, he cradled the back of their head to pull them into a quick kiss, stroking his other hand from the top of Beez’ knee down along their thigh. 

“You’re incredible, you know that?” 

The wait for him to undress had allowed Beez’ thoughts to surface a little more clearly, so they could roll their eyes in response and say, “Just fuck me already.” 

Gabriel laughed without any bitterness, slid the condom on. “So. How do you want to do this?” He sat back on his ankles, and Beez still couldn’t absorb how he loomed above them, even kneeling before them. He wrapped his hands around their ankles gently, rubbed up and down, encompassing the delicate turn of bone there. 

Beez knew. They always knew what this question meant, knew the judgment that would come with it, knew that as a small person, they held onto any power they had in bed with someone like Gabriel by a thread. Beez shrugged. 

Still resting between Beez’ knees, he asked “Like this?” 

Beez felt resentment licking at them, somewhere behind the heady rush of the wine, their endorphins, their still-present need. For him, this was just a fucking question. For them…

They’d paused too long. Gabriel asked, “Or not?”

Beez knew the right words, said them. “Nah, this is fine.” 

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “Fine?” he asked, and there was an edge to it. “We don’t have to, you know. I’m not here for ‘fine.’” 

_There_ was the prick who’d told off a stranger in Beez’ shop. Why was it still so fucking hot, even directed at them? 

Beez rolled their eyes, knocked their head back to stare at the ceiling. Groaned out a protracted “Fuck me,” and it wasn’t clear to Beez if it was a complaint or a request. 

Gabriel slid his fingers down to the crux of Beez’ thighs, massaged the line of their hip, and Beez’ nerves, traitorous, brought their back into an arch. One of his hands strayed up along their curls, the ghost of sensation over Beez’ clit impossible to ignore, then on to their belly, the curve of their ribs, their back, lifting them up, folding them with ease up against their knees. 

He said, “I don’t care how you like it. I just want you to like it. So tell me.” 

Beez thought, locking eyes with him, that he meant it. It came out barely audible. Fucking embarassing is what it was--not _what_ they wanted--but fucking whispering it. “From behind.”

Gabriel smiled, pleased, but not laughing, although his voice shook a little as he asked, “Hands and knees?” 

_His_ voice shaking. They could live with that. “Yeah.” 

He loosed them gently, their back curving down to the bed again. He shifted back to make room. He asked, “Well?”

Beelzebub, their heart in their throat for no fucking good reason, rolled over, shifted so their head was hanging over their pillow, their ass in the air, feeling exposed. 

They heard Gabriel cuss out a small “fuck” from behind them. “Gorgeous.” He ran his hands over their bottom, their hips, unexpectedly slipped his finger into them, somehow still at the right angle, the right curve. 

Beez muttered, warningly, the words half-broken, “Shit, Gabriel,” their push back against his hand belying their irritation at finding his fingers again instead of his cock, but he was already sliding his finger out, lining up against their slit, and a groan spilled out of them, until they shifted, muffling their face in their pillow. They felt his hands come around to curl over their hip bones as he filled them, as they pushed back, aching for more of that stinging stretch. 

They heard him start to come apart behind them, incoherent sounds falling from his lips as Beez curved their back a little and he caught on, holding them at the angle they’d found, as Beelzebub pressed back, hungry for it, taking in as much as they could. Feeling him inside them, they almost sobbed with relief, with the sensation of being filled, of realizing that all the time they hadn’t known they were hungry for this, they’d actually been fucking ravenous. 

He thrust a little within them, waking up nerve endings all through them: up the ladder of their spine and down to their toes, bent back for leverage on the bedspread. Beelzebub felt a cry building in them, grabbed the pillow in front of their face and loosed smaller sounds into it. They whimpered into the pillow again, only to find themselves pulled back onto Gabriel’s cock, hard and unexpected, the sound billowing into a wail. 

“Fuck, yes. Let it out.” Gabriel gasped out, “Let go. Let me hear you.” 

And if Beez had had any neighbors, they would have heard their insistent “Harder, harder--ah!” Between the thick press of rocking back into him and the way it was almost too much to bear, accompanied by the sound of Gabriel’s and their own desperation ringing in their ears, Beelzebub came with a shudder and an open-mouthed moan, deep and filthy. 

Gabriel’s stuttering hips and voice breaking over “Be-e-ez!” wasn’t far behind. He breathed heavily, staying in them, but not leaning on them like some pricks Beez had known. Then he slid his cock out and pulled Beez back into his lap, lifting them there as if they weighed nothing at all.

They didn’t go in for cuddling. Too soppy. But Gabriel’s arms were warm, and they were so tired, and boneless with pleasure. And still, maybe, a little drunk. So Beez settled into his chest, felt his softly curling hairs against their cheek, and sighed. They felt his breath, still ragged, breaking out of him, and his heartbeat slowing, as he knit himself back together. Beez thought of the muscles under his skin, of his heart beating there: tough, striated, inexhaustible. They thought of the way the valves flexed to let in fresh blood, oxygen. Beez breathed him in. 

He drew his hands along their ribs, Beez taking note of each one he touched, knowing precisely how each one connected to their spine, the ligaments and tendons that held them together around their lungs, wrapping those delicate tissues up safely, as Beez themself was wrapped up in Gabriel’s arms. 

**Author's Note:**

> Do you have any idea how hard it was not to make a series of meat jokes in this fic? 
> 
> This story comes from three things: a snatch of dialogue I woke up to (the bit about being taken apart), my apparently boundless thirst for ineffable bureaucracy smut, and [@Seekwill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekwill/pseuds/seekwill)'s suggestion for a skilled profession (butcher) for Beez.


End file.
